2010 MacBook Pro & GarageBand Crashes

A friend has given me his 2010 MacBook Pro to address some issues he's been having since installing Mavericks. He's been suffering lots of crashes while using iPhoto, Mail and GarageBand.

I gave the Mac the once over and Disk Utility found some errors on the disk that it was able to repair. I booted into Recovery and erased the startup disk and did a fresh install of Mavericks. I ran DU again and everything seems fine.

I used the Mac for a while; no problems. I installed iPhoto and all the iWork apps with no issues. Job done, I thought.

However, he asked me to install GarageBand 10 (GB) too. I did that and copied over a file from my Mac (a GB 5.1 file). As soon as I press play, the Mac crashes. Not just GB, but the Mac. It just shuts down immediately.

The 5.1 file works in safe boot but not in the main account or any other user account. I don't know what this means

Tests:
If I start a new project in Songwriter mode with a drum track, it's fine.

If I start a new empty project with a software instrument and add a few keys, it crashes when I click record.

It's pretty much unusable. What's going on?

Other issues:
1 USB socket is not working; an SMC and PRAM reset has no affect.
Sound appears to come from the right speaker more than the left. Balance setting is level.

I'm unsure whether this is a GB issue, a Mac OS X issue, or even a hardware issue!

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